Neuroscience

Scientists have studied human brain samples to isolate a set of proteins that accounts for over 130 brain diseases and found an intriguing link between such diseases,  the leading cause of medical disability in the developed world, according to the World Health Organization, with an economic costs in the USA exceeds $300 billion, and the evolution of the human brain. The brain is the most complex organ in the body with millions of nerve cells connected by billions of synapses. Within each synapse is a set of proteins, which bind together to build a molecular machine called the…

Researchers have created the first brain-wide wiring map of a fruit fly, a breakthrough that is being compared to the genome for geneticists, and they say it paves the way for a comprehensive analysis of information processing within and between neurons and ultimately a deeper understanding of control and causality in fly behavior.  The researchers constructed the map using what they call a reverse-engineering approach. They deconstructed a fly brain into thousands of single neurons (representing about 10 percent of the neurons in the entire fly brain) and then put them back together…

What happens when you die? What's right and wrong? What's the purpose of life? Aaaaarrghhh! Chill out, God has the answers. And the religious part of your brain knows it. The anterior cingulated cortex is the human home of anxiety. And it's increasingly chill in people with religious conviction. In fact this anxiety center is quieter in people with any strong convictions that answer big questions, including conservative political ideologies. (Lest ye nail this author to the cross of liberal media bias, this is not necessarily a bad thing: it seems that many people could benefit from a chill…

In the cult television series Mystery Science Theater 3000, we are treated to two aliens and a dude wisecracking their way through terrible old B-movies like Project Moonbase. For example, in their episode watching the 1963 movie, The Slime People: Up from the Bowels of the Earth, the main character calls the operator on the payphone at a deserted L.A. airport, and one of the robots improvises, “Hi. This is the human race. We're not in right now. Please speak clearly after the sound of the bomb.” Mystery Science Theater 3000 is now gone, but if you enjoy making fun of apocalyptic science…

Chronic jet lag alters the brain in ways that cause memory and learning problems long after returning to a regular 24-hour schedule, according to research by Berkeley psychologists. Twice a week for four weeks, the researchers subjected female Syrian hamsters to six-hour time shifts, the equivalent of a New York-to-Paris airplane flight.   During the last two weeks of jet lag and a month after recovery from it, the hamsters' performance on learning and memory tasks was measured.   As expected, during the jet lag period, the hamsters had trouble learning simple tasks that the…

This holiday season, starting today when you bite into the cranberry sauce and the tartness smacks your tongue as hard as that snide comment from your sister, consider the power of sour.Neurobiology researchers at the University of Southern California have made a surprising discovery about how some cells respond to sour tastes. Of the five taste sensations — sweet, bitter, sour, salty and umami — sour is arguably the strongest yet the least understood. Sour is the sensation evoked by substances that are acidic, such as lemons and pickles. The more acidic the substance, the more sour the taste…

We know the mouth is a useful orifice for venting our feelings: if we're "hot," speaking our anger can help us "cool off". And so the bigger the mouth, the better the cooling, right? Actually, yes. When our brain gets hot, we cool it through the mouth, and the best way to cool through the mouth is by yawning. Researchers showed this by cooking parakeets. Okay, they stopped short of actually cooking them, but they found that when temperature increased, the parakeet yawn rate doubled (there was no description of researchers' yawn rates). This fits with our understanding of yawning as a…

If you grew up like me you were brought up in a culture based on a dualist metaphysics, one that asserts that there is an objective reality outside of ourselves (whatever “we” are) and that we know about it indirectly through our senses and conscious reasoning.  This is the basis of the Western traditions of science, liberal arts and symbolic systems (such as mathematics and human language).  Essentially anything that can be studied is part of this metaphysics.  Observation and rationality may never lead to complete knowing, though everyone agrees we can…

A new study reveals that ‘introspection’ (thinking about our own thoughts or behavior) is anchored in a specific part of our brain. The research by scientists from the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at University College London examined people’s accuracy when reflecting on decisions they had made. "We were not studying the tendency to think too much, or the tendency to introspect, we were studying the accuracy of that process when it does occur.  We don’t have any data on the people who come into our study," says Steve Fleming, joint…

Bridges between dendritic spines in the brain makes neurons talk to each other better and makes you smarter. Patients suffering from Alzheimer's disease or schizophrenia have fewer of these bridges. A recent study showed that estrogen can make more of these bridges allowing more cross-talk. By switching an estrogen receptor 'switch', scientists were able to demonstrate that the communication between cells can be enhanced. While this could be a breakthrough in the ways we treat Alzheimer's disease or schizophrenia, there is also a mounting case against long term estrogen therapy. Menopausal…